Thursday, July 29, 2010
Books The Late David Markson's Very Annotated Books For Sale at The Strand
Posted by Mark Asch on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 2:57 PM
For Newsweek, Seth Colter Walls runs down to the Strand to pick up what he can of the dispersed personal library of the experimental writer David Markson (author of Wittgenstein’s Mistress and This Is Not a Novel, among other novels), who died last month.
Earlier this week, the London Review of Books's Alex Abromavich informed readers that Markson's library of classic and contemporary novels, poetry and philosophy, inscribed with Markson's name on the flyleaf and heavily annotated in his hand, appeared to have been sold to The Strand in bulk, and were being resold. He found this out when someone passed on a tip from an undergrad, whose copy of White Noise had previously belonged to Markson: "oh god the pomposity, the bullshit!" he had written alongside one passage. A small flood of readers began scouring the Strand for Markson's books and marginalia—one Keith Lincoln contributed an account of his haul at htmlgiant—and are beginning to upload particularly interesting marginalia to a Facebook group created for the purpose.
Our favorite bit of Markson marginalia—so far—is above. It's always fascinating, owning books (or anything else) that used to belong to strangers; what's interesting here is how the dispersed detritus of the deceased is being used to piece a picture—of Markson the reader and writer—back together.
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